Czechs increasingly charitable despite economic woes

Over the past two decades, philanthropy has become an important part of
Czech society, with many people being increasing generous in giving to
charity. Radio Prague looks at how the gloomy economic climate affected
Czech philanthropy in the past year, and how the donor culture has
developed.

Photo: archive of ČRo 7 - Radio Prague
Czechs are often seen through a post-communist lens as skeptical about
charitable giving, suspicious of non-profit organizations, believing that
people should help themselves or that at the worst the state should help
those in need. But the statistics available and the experience of experts
in the field show that this may be pretty far from the truth.

The total volume of charitable giving in the Czech Republic has doubled in
the past decade or so. It was increasing steadily for about ten years
before 2008, when economic uncertainty may have played a role in a slight
decrease or simply stagnation. But Jan Kroupa, from the Czech Fundraising
Center, which helps NGOs develop strategies for attracting donors, says
the
crisis has not had a large impact on the overall volume of giving in the
past couple of years:

“In 2010 and 2011 individual giving has been on the rise again. And
last
year it grew by somewhere between five and six percent. This is largely
due
to an increase in corporate giving, which has been, surprisingly, the
fastest growing sector in the past few years. Corporate giving grew by
almost 11 percent in 2011.”

In the Czech Republic, where the culture of giving to charities and
non-profit organizations does not have a long tradition, the make-up of
the
donor pool is somewhat unconventional. Whereas in countries like the
United
States or the UK, eighty percent of all the charitable gifts are made by
the richest five percent of the population, the Czech Republic’s super
rich contribute to only a one third of all the financial gifts. The
remaining two-thirds are donors from medium and low-income brackets and
almost half of donors with the lowest income are pensioners. I asked Mr
Kroupa about what charitable causes appeal most to Czechs and what they
would rarely give money for:

“Czechs generally don’t necessarily like to, or are not mature
enough
donors, to support complicated or controversial causes. Such as Roma
issues
or other more difficult to understand issues such as watchdogs or
think-tanks.

In general, this country has not really reached the same level of the
number of donors or the amounts given as in most west European countries.
Although things are most certainly improving, Jan Kroupa sees this more as
a problem of the organizations seeking donations rather than the donors:

“I would say that the biggest obstacles for Czech to give [to
charity]
is that they are not asked enough, and they are not asked well enough. The
amount of fundraising activity is still relatively low compared to other
countries with uninterrupted tradition of philanthropic giving. Compared
to
other Central European countries, Czechs are very generous, and I think
the
major obstacle in increasing giving is that Czech charities are not active
enough in their fundraising.”

There are hundreds of charities currently functioning in the Czech
Republic providing support to a vast variety of causes. Some of them have
staff members dedicated to fundraising, but many smaller NGOs just cannot
afford to hire an extra person or struggle to find skilled fundraising
experts who would work for a non-profit salary. So why hasn’t the
non-profit sector developed the needed infrastructure and skills to
effectively raise money from donations? Jan Kroupa sees the roots of the
problem in the early post-communist days of this country:

“It’s a combination of reasons. The Czech NGO sector was kick
started
in the 90s by Western private foundations. In the 90s we were spoiled, to
a
degree, by easily accessible grants mostly from large foundation.
Relatively soon, they began to leave the Czech Republic towards the end of
the 90s there was almost no one here. But they taught Czech NGOs to write
grants and be very good at that. And even though already in the early 90s
they told us to learn how to work with our constituencies, larger donors
and be more active in fundraising. But as long as Czech NGOs could
relatively easily receive relatively large amounts of money, who would
bother fundraising.

Photo: European Commission“Their departure more or less coincided and overlapped with
the appearance of pre-accession funds from the EU. So the NGOs just
swapped to them. And we
were never forced to face the fact that in the long-run we will have to go
out and ask for public support.”

The European funds, Jan points out, will end very soon, as the EU cuts
back on structural funding. The big challenge for Czech NGOs is now to
attract a much greater number of large donors. Although there are many
individuals who may be persuaded to open up their pocketbooks for a good
cause, the most effective way to get large donations is approach
companies.
Corporate giving is a growing trend all over the world, and the Czech
Republic is no different. In fact, Pavlina Kalousova, who works for the
Czech association of social conscious companies called Business for
Society, told me that this are has seen vast changes in the past decade:

“There has been an enormous evolution in the sphere of corporate
giving.
This is due to the fact that more and more companies are looking into
integrating the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach into their
business. Big companies have started looking into the synergy of their
corporate strategy and the area they are supporting. And the biggest
mental
change has been that the employees of the companies started to get engaged
through corporate volunteering and through employee engagement
programs.”

In foreign-owned companies operating in the Czech Republic, the CSR
strategy is usually dictated from the mother company. But for local
businesses, the initiative of the employees is often the first and main
building-block for greater engagement in charitable giving.

“People want to work in a company that is responsible, that gives
them an
opportunity to be engaged in their community. But also the customers are
looking more often into where the products they buy come from, and if the
company that produces them is involved with CSR and is behaving
responsibly.”

Pavlína Kalousová, photo: CSR Europe
Corporate giving in this country also seems to have been almost crisis
free in the past few years. Ms Kalousova has only seen more cautious
decisions from companies in the past few months:

“In the past year I have seen a sort of nervousness from the
corporate
sector. They don’t know what to expect from the economy in our country.
There is no decrease in the number of companies giving money to
the
community, but rather the amount of money each of them invests into
charitable causes.
We try to motivate companies and show them that it’s not only about
money, and that they can compensate the non-profit sector in other ways.
For
example, they can give the time of their employees, or pro bono services,
or
in-kind donations.”

Supplementing the decrease in financial support with volunteering time or
services has been a growing trend in the past five years. Many companies
have also begun building their social responsibility models on, somewhat
cynically, what they need to successfully do their business. The benefits
are of course not only for them, but hopefully for the society as a whole.

“The companies are looking into areas that they can support that
are
somehow close to their business strategy or corporate culture. They are
supporting more and more projects in education and cooperating with
schools
and universities in order to support potential talent. Or, for example,
they invest in water conservation projects or prevention programs or even
projects in financial education, when it comes to banks. So, more and
more,
strategic giving and strategic CSR is connected with the character of the
company and the area where it is active.”

Pavlina Kalousová’s outlook on the efforts of non-profits are less
gloomy than Jan Kroupa’s, and she offered other concrete ways that
charities could work on attracting corporate donors.

Photo: archive of ČRo 7 - Radio Prague“They should look more closely at the priorities of the companies
have.
In the area of HR, for example, it would be women leaders, work-life
balance. In the area of environmental protection it would be CO2
emissions,
energy saving. It doesn’t necessarily have to only be about asking
companies for money, but also offering partnerships or expertise to
companies in order to develop [the culture of] corporate social
responsibility as such in the Czech Republic.”

Larger companies like Vodafone, O2, or some banks have also partially
adjusted to the NGO's focus on grants, offering fellowships for new
socially
conscious projects in communities. But developing better donor relations
is
an inevitability for most Czech NGOs. The non-profit sector and civil
society in general in this country has grown by leaps and bounds in the
past two decades, and economic woes have not seemed to decrease the amount
of interest individuals and companies have in giving to a good cause.